Bonus Chapter for 50 power stones, thank you!!
…
The two Elite Jōnin rushed Takeo again, abandoning cautious testing. Wind and lightning coming together, forcing Takeo to block instead of redirecting. Every clash sent vibrations up his damaged arm.
He tried to mirror their rhythm once again.
"Page Two, Still Water Mirro—"
A kick interrupted him mid stance.
The second Jōnin had adapted, breaking the established sequence intentionally. Takeo's blade barely intercepted the follow up strike, driving him to one knee.
"You compress chakra beautifully." The first Jōnin said as he circled. "But you do lack chakra reserves."
Takeo's jaw tightened as he surged upward suddenly, his sword flashing in a tight arc.
"Page Seven, Voice of The Flower."
The strike was damn near imperceptible, restrained to the absolute limit. It slipped past the second Jōnin's guard and opened a thin line across his chest.
Silence.
Both Jōnin stepped back at the same time.
"That was very dangerous." One of them admitted.
"If he had more stamina…"
"He'd be a catastrophe for sure."
"Hey, old man. My name is Bunta, my partner is Rui. We are shinobi of the village hidden in the sand." The first one said.
Takeo raised an eyebrow. "Hm?"
Bunta grinned. "I just figured you were worthy of knowing our names. Consider it a sign of respect."
Takeo's vision blurred slightly, his legs felt heavier.
Both of the Jōnin suddenly pressed him without hesitation.
A coordinated feint drew his guard high, a sweep then knocked his footing out. Before he could recover, a palm strike reinforced with chakra slammed into his abdomen and sent him flying.
He was sent crashing through a fractured building as the debris fell on him.
For a moment, it was quiet.
Then the rubble shifted.
Takeo rose slowly, blood running down his wrinkled forehead, white blade still in his hand.
He stepped forward once more.
The Jōnin watched him quietly.
"He's still going." Rui murmured.
Takeo surged forward desperately, his elegance was gone but his strikes were still precise. But Bunta blocked the attack, countered and pressured.
Another kick to the ribs followed by a clash that numbed Takeo's fingers.
His breathing grew ragged, strained by the effort it took to continue.
Finally, Rui disarmed him with a sharp twist and drove a knee into his chest, sending him sprawling onto his back.
Takeo tried to rise.
His arms trembled.
He managed to push himself halfway up before his strength gave out and he dropped to one knee, his sword barely keeping him upright.
Bunta and Rui stood several meters away.
Breathing steady, not as exhausted as Takeo.
Yukio watched in horror, he was unable to move, unable to do anything as he watched his sensei get brutalised.
"You are extraordinary," Bunta said plainly.
"If you had formal training," the second added. "Perhaps you would've been Kage-level."
Takeo forced himself to stand fully.
His entire life had been spent upholding his vows and the weight of taking his brother's life.
As a child, he was always so dishonourable and rude.
He remembered, from a young age he was always hailed as the greatest genius to ever come from the Natsuki family, he mastered the Kagamihana after seeing it once and never once lost a duel.
This made him arrogant, he'd always talk down on his elders and bully his peers.
Especially his younger brother.
Since Takeo was a genius, he believed that he had taken all of the talent from his brother to himself. But he did not feel bad, he was glad.
He hated his younger brother, Shima Natsuki.
The kid always had a bright grin on his face, always so full of joy despite everything being against him.
He had no talent at all, but he always tried his best. He would spend day in, day out training, never skipping a day.
Even when Takeo would beat him without mercy, Shima would always get back up with a bright smile on his face, proud that his older brother was so strong.
Takeo had discovered how to activate the Tenrigan when he was fifteen and used it all the time to get his way.
He truly believed he was the greatest person ever.
Until he lost.
On the day that he and Shima had to duel for the position of family head, when Takeo was sixteen and his brother was fourteen…
Shima had manually activated the flow state, all of his training had made his body ridiculously strong and his technique had been refined from years of non stop training.
He was incredible, a boy that was born with nothing and built his way up to become equal to someone born with everything.
And so, Takeo activated the Tenrigan and killed him where he stood.
He remembered it vividly, the feeling of slicing his brother into shreds.
And when he went over to check on whether or not Shima had died, he remembered his final words.
"You… are so strong, big brother… I am happy…"
Those words changed his perspective entirely, challenging the narrative he had created.
Those words made Takeo fully realise his cruelty, in less than a minute his hatred towards his younger brother had been shattered and warped into that of despair at the sight of his little brother dying.
Even though he had once hated his brother, the image of his smile would continue to haunt him at night. The boy born with nothing, who had worked all of his life to finally attain a fraction of what Takeo was born with, was killed the second he had achieved his goal.
And despite it all, he died with a bright smile on his face.
And so, Takeo had never used the eyes again.
He had upheld his honour his entire life from that day onward, gone was the Dishonourable Genius of The Natsuki family.
Until today, where he had broken one of his vows and reclaimed the name he had forsaken.
He had been an honourable man, but he had become weak. His dishonourable nature made him strong, his negative emotions made him strong. But that isn't what he had wanted to be, he wanted to be kind, he wanted to be someone respected and someone… like Shima.
No!
Despite his dishonourable nature, there was one person… one person who respected him with every fibre of their being.
Shima. Shima had respected him from the day he was born, he aspired to be like the dishonourable Takeo, even in his dying moments he respected him, he viewed Takeo as his incredible older brother.
So long as Shima had respect for him, that is all that mattered. It didn't matter if he was honourable or dishonourable. All that mattered now was making sure that his younger brother could live, be it through his sword or through Yukio.
Back in the present, Takeo's eyes widened as streams of tears fell.
He poured every last drop of chakra he had into his eyes, grinning as he felt the power flow through his body.
Under no circumstance would he allow Yukio to die here today, even if it meant he would die in his stead.
Takeo stared directly into the eyes of the two Jōnin, his brown eyes replaced with the beautiful golden Eyes of The Lord.
"In that case… allow my final moments to be dishonourable."
…
…
A compact mass of sand shot toward Sora's skull fast enough to break bone on impact. Sora's body moved before he could think, his eyes flaring quickly to read the sudden spike in chakra from Gaara's body and the sand in the ground. He pivoted sharply, the sand grazing his cheek instead of crushing his face and skidded sideways across the surface of the sand.
Gaara stood with his arms crossed.
The sand moved to hover around him in a slow orbit.
"I don't like you." Gaara said flatly. "So you're gonna die."
Sora frowned slightly. "I didn't even do anything."
The sand answered instead.
It exploded upward in a column, widening midair before crashing down.
At the same time, Sora slammed his palm into the sandy ground.
The earth moved without him even needing to weave any hand seals.
A slab of hardened stone surged upward at an angle, intercepting the falling sand. The collision sent grit blasting outward in all directions. The stone fractured instantly under pressure, but it gave him enough time to flicker out of the attack.
Gaara didn't move once, he was just standing there.
But the sand moved in his stead.
It slithered across the ground and then lunged from three separate angles, forming blunt spears aimed at Sora's ribs, thigh and throat. Sora ducked the first, spun under the second and kicked the third aside, only for it to reform midair and whip back toward him.
His eyes flickered for a moment as he analysed the sand that came from Gaara's gourd.
This sand was weird, it had chakra woven through each grain.
He exhaled and struck the air with a sharp palm thrust.
His own chakra flared outward as his Tenrigan disrupted the chakra.
The incoming spear destabilised, the chakra guiding it scattered and dispersed long enough for Sora to slip past it and get up close and personal.
The man that was with Gaara suddenly got a strange feeling.
He and Gaara had been sent to look for a child known as Hikaru Otsutsuki who had abilities pretty damn similar to the abilities of this kid right here.
Normally, he would've tried to stop Gaara, but he had a very bad feeling about this Sora kid. So he allowed it for now.
Gaara's eyes widened as Sora entered his guard.
He drove a punch straight toward Gaara's face.
But the sand intercepted automatically.
A compact shield slammed into Sora's fist, sending a shock up his arm.
Sora quickly twisted mid impact and pivoted into a knee strike toward Gaara's midsection.
It was blocked yet again.
This defence wasn't reactive nor was it manual. Sora quickly judged it as an automatic defence that moved without Gaara's will.
He clicked his tongue softly and leapt back as a wave of sand tried to swallow his legs.
The desert sand he was standing on liquified.
Gaara raised one hand slightly and then froze.
All three of the people immediately looked off into the distance as they saw a large golden beam piercing the heavens, the wave hitting all of them as they heard a sonic scream from over a hundred miles away.
"What the…" the man with Gaara said, turning his attention to the distance.
Gaara didn't pay attention to it as much as the other two and quickly continued his attack.
Sand rose in walls around Sora, closing in from all sides in a tightening sphere. The pressure intensified suffocatingly, like a coffin was being formed around him.
Sora quickly regained his composure and pressed both palms outward.
The ground beneath the sand hardened.
Earth chakra surged through the lower layers, compressing and stabilising the foundation. The rising sand sphere faltered slightly as the part resisted reshaping.
Sora kicked off the hardened patch and burst upward through the narrowing gap before it sealed him inside.
He landed lightly on a sloped rocky ridge.
Gaara raised his head.
The sand around him hovered higher now, forming tendrils instead of waves.
They shot forward in strange and unusual patterns, not blunt but whipping lines that were trying to entangle Sora.
But Sora moved through them pretty well.
Each step was placed exactly where the chakra currents were most weak. Each pivot timed to the microsecond before a tendril fully solidified. His body adjusted without conscious planning, reading Gaara's internal chakra and responding in kind.
He slipped past two strikes and stepped forward again, not aiming for Gaara directly but for the gourd.
His fingers grazed it and then the sand detonated outward.
A concussive burst slammed into Sora's chest and sent him flying backward across the dunes. He rolled twice before creating a spectral golden wall behind him to stop himself.
He coughed once, his breathing a little heavier than before.